Breeding season.

[emroul]

Oh, and your questions (almost forgot, lol).

When does the breeding season start? When should I put the male and female together?

In captivity, you can make breeding season occur whenever you want. I would say cool down should start around October, and you could begin introducing pairs in mid-late November (remember, that's not a rule or anything. I did this and it worked well for me).

How long should I keep them together?

What I did, and worked well, was keep the male in the females enclosure for 3-5 days (depending if copulation was progressing or not) and separated them for about 5 days, offered them a meal, and put them back together for another 3-5 days. I did this until they were just not interested in eachother anymore (which took about a month of doing that introducing and separating). The female continued to eat that entire time, while the male did not. Whether or not you want to offer them food during this time is up to you. I just figure the bigger the female is the better (and she was obviously thinking the same thing, lol).

What size enclosure should they be in?

You can just put the male into the females enclosure for the breeding periods like I mentioned above; that should be fine.

Oh, and I personally will never breed a female until she hits the 2,000 gram mark (and depending on length, she may have to weigh more). I have a 2,500 gram female that laid eggs about a month ago, and after she laid I weighed her in at 1,200 grams!! I couldn't imagine breeding a 1,200 gram female. She would probably lay really small eggs in a really small clutch (not to mention that it puts so much physical strain on them to breed). That's my personal opinion.

Jennifer